There are no coincidences...even on vacation

Last week my family and I went on vacation to Myrtle Beach, SC, where this was the view from my “office,” located on the 19th-floor balcony of a high-rise hotel:

Copyright 2015 Barb Szyszkiewicz. All rights reserved.

I could sit and look at that all day. And a lot of the time, I did exactly that.

We arrived late Saturday evening and, after unpacking, logged on to MassTimes.org to find a church for Mass the next morning. It made sense to go to the closest one after spending many more hours in the car than we’d planned (traffic on I-95 in Virginia was terribly slow. For hundreds of miles.)

After Mass, we were handed a bulletin on the way out, and I idly scanned it on our way back from church. That’s when I saw a familiar name in the list of announced Masses for Monday morning.

The Mass was for one of my great-aunts. She had moved to Myrtle Beach a few years ago to be near her only daughter.

Aunt Marge passed away last year at the age of ninety-something, predeceased by her husband and daughter. Another aunt (my mom’s sister) had made a few trips to SC during Aunt Marge’s final illness to help arrange things, so I texted my cousin to tell her about finding Aunt Marge’s name in the bulletin. My cousin said that one of the parish priests was faithful in visiting my great-aunt in the nursing home, praying with her and giving her the Sacrament of the Sick. After Aunt Marge’s death, my mom’s sister sent a donation to the parish in gratitude. She received a note of thanks that stated that the priest had dedicated that donation to several Masses for the repose of Aunt Marge’s soul.

Hubs and I made sure to get up early the next day so we could attend that Mass for Aunt Marge.

What are the odds that we’d have chosen that vacation destination, putting us closest to that church, during that very week? We couldn’t have planned it better if we’d tried.

About Author

Barb Szyszkiewicz is a wife, mom, Secular Franciscan, managing editor for Today's Catholic Teacher magazine and editor at CatholicMom.com. Her three children range in age from high school to young adult, and she enjoys writing, cooking, and reading. Barb is a music minister at her parish and an avid Notre Dame football and basketball fan. Find her blog at FranciscanMom and her family’s favorite recipes with nutrition information for diabetics at Cook and Count.